


How It Goes (I Came To Be)

by Krasimer



Series: Don't Take My Sunshine Away [21]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Backstory, Blackwatch Genji Shimada, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Genji Angst, Hanzo Angst, Human Genji Shimada, Implied Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada, Jesse McCree & Genji Shimada Are Best Friends, M/M, Young Genji Shimada, Young Hanzo Shimada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 09:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13268964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: They had forgotten, somehow, that he was a Shimada.Or rather, they had forgotten that he was a trained ninja, in favor of all the pieces of evidence he had left for them to find. The rich playboy who went out into town every day and night, gambling away bits of the family fortune, that was who they all thought of him as.‘A few days’ turned out to be a little less than a week. Five days until the Overwatch team could come and retrieve him. Five days to continue pretending to still be who he had once been. Five days to pretend he had not woken up, one day, and realized how little he had done with his life.Genji could pretend for one more week.





	How It Goes (I Came To Be)

They had forgotten, somehow, that he was a Shimada.

Or rather, they had forgotten that he was a trained ninja, in favor of all the pieces of evidence he had left for them to find. The rich playboy who went out into town every day and night, gambling away bits of the family fortune, that was who they all thought of him as.

Genji looked down from his hiding place in the rafters and swallowed nervously. The heads of the clan had gathered, had dragged Hanzo into the meeting as well. His vantage point gave him a good view but hearing them was hard. He had to strain to do so and if he moved too much, he would be found out. What he could hear, however, did not bode well. The heads of the clan were angry about him, were angry about how his supposed reputation was harming theirs.

With his eyes narrowed, Genji watched as they turned to his brother, saying something in quiet voices.

Hanzo responded by rearing back as if he had been slapped, his eyes narrowed. “I will _not!”_ he snarled back.

“If Genji is allowed to continue on like this,” one of them scolded, “The entire clan will be in danger of a damaged reputation. How are we to continue on in our business if he is dragging us through the mud?”

“My brother is-”

“Ruining everything, entirely so.” Another said. He was the one their father had entrusted the businesses to until Hanzo had come of age. “It is best to rip the problem out at the root. Genji must be gotten rid of to maintain our standards.”

Feeling his blood turn to ice, Genji watched as Hanzo ordered them out. His brother sat alone at the table, face in his hands.

Holding his breath, Genji slipped back out the window, scaling the roof and climbing in through the window that led to his own room. Sitting on the desk was a comm unit he had been given. Overwatch had approached him and asked him to join their cause.

And Genji was not as stupid as he led onlookers to believe.

With an almost-imperceptible trembling in his hand, he picked up the comm unit and swallowed his nerves before pressing the button that would connect him with someone in the organization. It took only a few seconds for a voice to come down the line and answer. “Agent Winston, what is the situation?”

It took half of a moment, but Genji remembered who Winston was. The doctor and the knight had explained and pulled him into a vid call while talking with Genji. “This is Shimada Genji,” he glanced towards the door. “I have reason to believe that some of my family knows what I am trying to do.” He bit at his bottom lip and leaned his back against the wall.

The recruitment had been simple.

The Shimada clan was a clan of criminals, plain and obvious. At face-value, they were simply businessmen and women, involved in trade and commerce like a number of other rich families. Overwatch, however, knew better. On a tip from another mission they had gone on, they had found a connection from some drug-running and a murder. The connection had led straight back to the Shimada clan, but without any proof, it was not wise to accuse. Overwatch had monitored the family and had come across Genji, the playboy and useless. They had approached him then, a woman named Angela Ziegler and a man named Reinhardt.

They had explained.

He had known, since he had turned twelve, that his family had been involved in criminal businesses. Hanzo had known as well, was all set to inherit and run everything once their father had passed. It made part of him weep – Hanzo was not meant for criminal intent. Despite everything, he had a good heart and a kind soul.

But he was the heir.

Their father had died a year later. Genji was still half-convinced that he had been gotten rid of like the clan heads were now trying to do to him.

“Genji?” Winston’s voice came back on the line. “It looks like there will be a team in the area in just a few days. They had to move on to another mission but when that is done, their transport route moves them back towards you. Do you think you can be safe until then?”

A few days could be the difference between life and death. The difference between getting out without being found out and getting out in a coffin.

“Yes,” Genji found himself answering anyway. “I believe so.”

As Winston continued to advise him, briefly, Genji wondered just how much faith he had in his own words.

 

In order to keep up appearances, there were things that Genji had to do.

Truthfully, they were not hardships.

Go out to the arcade and play games for some time. Go out to the ramen stand he had been going to his entire life. Go to the casino and fritter away some money on useless bets.

Those were things that Genji could do.

‘A few days’ turned out to be a little less than a week. Five days until the Overwatch team could come and retrieve him. Five days to continue pretending to still be who he had once been. Five days to pretend he had not woken up, one day, and realized how little he had done with his life.

Genji could pretend for one more week.

 

On the third day, his rooms had been entered.

Genji managed to keep himself from stopping just inside the door, continuing the motion as smoothly as if he had not noticed things out of place. The maids were always very particular about how they did things – Everything was smoothed into neatness and anything left out on the desk or the side table was left alone.

The things on his side table were facing the wrong way. It was not obvious unless you knew what to look for, as Genji did.

He had a number of statues on his side table, some with stupid faces, odd heads that bobbed gently up and down. One of the bobbing ones had a head that was not glued to the internal spring any longer, meaning that it twisted with barely any provocation.

The side table had a drawer that had to be yanked open.

Genji always reset the broken statue after opening the drawer. When he had been a child, it had been for the sake of making sure his brother was minding his own business. As an adult, as an Overwatch recruit, it was for the sake of making sure that his mission would not be compromised.

He may have been compromised.

There was a particular taste in the back of his mouth as he moved towards the side table and pulled it open. The broken statue did not even move in response to the drawer, having been tilted entirely off base and out of position by the previous opening. Within the drawer was a secret compartment.

It had been opened as well.

His heart nearly beating out of his chest, Genji popped it back open, running the tip of his finger along the small scratches in the wood. Someone had forced it open and then jammed it back shut, no caution in their actions. The key he kept inside it was still within, however.

Grabbing it out, Genji dropped to his knees on the floor and slid under the Western-style bed, scooting along on his back until he was face-to-face with a keyhole that lay under where he slept at night. It was near the middle of the bed, nearly impossible to find unless someone knew what they were looking for. He had, rather geniusly he thought, gotten the wood and pretended to be using it to ‘Be a ninja warrior’. The bulk of it had been used to build in another layer on the underside of his bed, a place to hide his secrets.

The rest had been handed off to a maid to deal with, suitably dented with impressions of his hands and feet.

Genji knew how to keep up appearances.

His green hair was re-dyed every four weeks, whenever even the slightest hint of black roots started showing. He wore bright clothing and loud shoes when he was not wearing his training clothes. He projected the image of brash and stupid and loud and the heads of the clan had bought it.

Better to be thought of as useless than to be used by them. He had seen what they had done to Hanzo – His brother was always so stressed, these days.

There was gray in his hair at the age of twenty-five.

There were many things he hid from the clan, but the secret he kept under his bed, that was something he had been smart enough to hide _extremely well._ He had been planning, eventually, to tell Hanzo and drag his brother out of the criminal empire their father had helped to build up.

Genji would have been better off if he had been forced to be the one in charge but neither of them would ever be happy while taking part in that life.

Steeling himself, prepared for whatever might have been changed, Genji stuck the key in the lock and turned it. The hinged door he had built by himself swung open and he caught the edge of it. Nothing seemed out of place. With a deep breath, Genji reached into the darkness waiting for him and patted around. The bag he had packed with the belongings he was going to take with him was still there. As much money as he was able to pull out was in another bag, pulled out every time he went to the casino and the arcade under the guise of spending it foolishly. On top of the money was a vid-comm, one with a direct link to the higher-ranking members of Overwatch.

It was almost less reassuring to find everything still in place.

If someone had been able to find the secret compartment in the drawer with the key in it, they would likely be searching for where the key went as well.

Genji shut the door again, sliding out from underneath his bed and dusting himself off.

Things were going sideways, it seemed.

 

It was the middle of the night when Genji decided to make a run for it.

He had made painstakingly careful checks on the rest of the clan, the maids, the servants, anyone who might catch him sneaking out with his bags. Had memorized their schedules. He had ordered a box of snack foods be brought up to his rooms, as little out of the ordinary as he could manage.

Most of the snacks were in his bags.

Genji stopped in the shrine room on his way out. The tapestry of the dragon symbol seemed to be staring at him, judging him for the weight of the comm in his pocket. From his other pocket, Genji pulled out a lighter and kneeled before the shrine, holding the flame to the waiting incense.

“I am sorry,” he whispered to the dragons. The one in his back seemed to slither under his skin, worried and anxious as much as he was. “I must go. If…If you can hear me, mother, I am trying to do right by the world. Father, please forgive me. I am only trying to do what is right.” He turned his eyes up towards the ceiling and sighed, covering his face. “I am only trying to do _right_.”

“And yet you fail so impressively,” Hanzo’s voice made him jolt. “Time and time _again_ , Genji.”

Genji had rarely heard his brother so angry. “Hanzo,” he stood up quickly and turned to him holding up his hands. His brother had his swords out. Genji’s own sword was still on his back, sheathed.

He did not reach for it.

“I tried defending you,” Hanzo hissed the words out, his eyes narrowing as he stared at his little brother. “I told the heads of our clan that you were not a threat to us, that you would never be.”

He inclined his head downward, his glare seeming more intense with how his eyes never shifted from his target.

“I see I was a fool,” Hanzo’s voice dropped into a snarl in the moment before he rushed towards Genji and struck.

Genji threw himself backward, knocking over the incense and dropping to the floor to avoid the twin-blades his brother wielded. “Hanzo, please, _listen-_ ”

“I WILL NOT LISTEN TO A TRAITOR!” Hanzo’s hair whipped around his shoulders and Genji flipped himself to his feet, using the end of the tail to wrap the rest of it around his brother’s face. If he pulled out his sword, if he summoned his dragon, the three dragons and the two brothers would be locked in a battle that would end with all of them dead or injured. Using his brother’s distraction, Genji ran around him and tried to put some distance between them.

With one hand, he reached into his pocket and pressed the emergency button on the comm.

“You spent months betraying our family, right under my nose,” Hanzo seemed to have switched his emotions off, somehow. He approached again, slowly this time, his swords held out in a manner that said he was going to kill Genji. “You betrayed me. I tried to _defend you._ ”

Genji bumped against the wall near the entrance of the room and swallowed almost audibly. He had one chance, only one shot. He had to get to his bags.

He was not going to draw his sword on his brother.

If he could just explain, Hanzo would see reason. He always had been the more logical of the two of them – if things were explained to him, all the evidence laid out before him, Hanzo would always see reason and choose the right side in an argument.

Once he had made up his mind, it was hard to change it. Good thing that Genji had a lifetime of experience on his side in that endeavor.

With his brother winding up to swing his weapons, Genji ran forward and dropped. His feet continued moving and he skidded across the floor and under his brother’s reach. “Hanzo, _please_ ,” Genji pleaded, bolting for his bags. His heart was thudding in his chest and his dragon was making his skin crawl with how loud she was roaring in his head.

He didn’t sense the attack in time.

In between moments, it seemed, his brother’s voice rang out, the twins summoned from their realm. Genji felt the angry-fire of their fangs dragging at him, around him, ripping him apart. His brother’s swords swung as one weapon and he felt like he was being split in half.

Unconsciousness greeted him mercifully quick.

 

He actually woke up, which was the surprising part.

“Carefully,” came a soft voice to his left. The gentle accent belonged to Angela Ziegler, he remembered that. “You are still healing.”

One of her hands was on his shoulder, guiding him back down. Genji shuddered as he looked up at her, the touch bringing him fully to awareness. Every part of him burned with pain. The three beings he could have sworn would never hurt him had attacked him.

Hanzo and the twin dragons that had attached themselves to him.

His back ached the worst, it seemed. The dull thud of pain along his spine was the part of everything that made him want to retch and pass out again, at the very least. When he tried to speak, Angela looked at him and shook her head. “Please,” she whispered. “Do not strain yourself. You have been stabilized but you are…” she pinched her lips together and Genji was reminded of how few years lay between their ages.

Thinking over everything again brought him back to thinking of his brother.

Hanzo had attacked him.

The pain in his heart seemed to double and Genji let his eyes slip closed. If he woke, then he woke. If he did not, he would not have to deal with a thrice-broken heart.

He almost hoped he would not wake.

 

His dragon tattoo had been ripped apart.

Angela had informed him on his body and seemed so surprised when he had asked about it. She had acted like it was unimportant.

 

He was a fragment, now, pieces of the man he had once been.

Angela had outfitted him with armor and everything he would need to keep going, at his request. Genji owed his life to her and to Overwatch. What little of it remained would go to them.

He was sewn together from scrap-flesh and metal.

Shimada Genji was dead, Shimada Genji had lived to tell the tale.

 

“Well I’ll be,” a voice drawled. “Never did see a real-life ninja before.”

(One day, he would know how important Jesse McCree would be. His first real friend besides his own brother.)

Genji pulled the sword he carried everywhere out of the sheath on his back and chased Jesse down the hallway with it. The cowboy-obsessed young man cackled and simply ran from him. It turned out to be a trap of sorts, Jesse luring him into a room with a television and a movie cued up. A movie about ninjas and cowboys and the people whose adventurous stories had them being something in between.

Jesse only grinned even wider when Genji sat down and spent the entire film glaring at the screen.

That was how their friendship began.

 

Six months into being twenty-one, Genji had been outfitted with better armor and had recovered a bit more.

Every night still had an anti-bacterial wash and every morning was spent heaving himself out of a bed that still felt too small and strange. His limbs still felt sluggish, though he knew he was more recovered than he had any right to be, given his injuries.

Genji had also finished adding a layer of steel around his sword, near the handle, along with a trigger. Inside the metal was a carefully etched image of the tattoo that had once been on his back. The trigger would allow him to summon his dragon again.

The first thing he did when she came was press his head against hers and sob for what seemed like an eternity.

She looked almost as ragged as he did.

 

Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison and Ana Amari were all dead.

Genji watched the news just the same as Jesse did, the both of them staring at the broadcast with the same shock dragging at their senses. Time seemed to crawl, the announcement of Jack and Gabriel being gone entering his mind in slow motion.

Overwatch and Blackwatch were being disbanded, their leaders were dead.

“Shit,” Jesse muttered, lighting up a cigar and chewing on the end of it as he waved Genji along. “C’mon, that means we only got a bit a’ time before the building is shut down and we can’t get in.” he pulled his serape closer around himself, hiding the cybernetic arm he had only gotten a few months before. “Swiss headquarters is blown,” he tapped down the button on his comm and spoke into it. “Genji and I are recalling in to get our stuff and then we’re headin’ out.”

He released the button and turned to look at Genji.

The slow-roll of his gut made him want to be sick, but Genji nodded. “Scatter,” he whispered. “Protocol in situations like this.”

“Yeah,” Jesse leaned forward and clapped his flesh hand on Genji’s still-flesh-under-armor shoulder. “Ain’t got time fer anythin’ but quick goodbyes.” He clenched his fingers tight for a moment, then nodded as well. “Grab yer stuff, get out again. Scatter and lay down trail says you ain’t anywhere near here.” He tapped his knuckle against Genji’s chest armor. “Deal with that anger a’ yers.”

“Go underground, cowboy,” Genji smirked under his faceplate. “Do not let your ridiculous outfit get you caught.”

They headed back to base in silence.

Genji watched from a rooftop until Jesse was out of sight, the motorcycle that Reyes had prided himself on the cowboy’s mode of transport.

 

Nepal was freezing.

Usually, under his armor, Genji felt nearly nothing. Everything was varying levels of pressure – nothing felt real, nothing felt as close as he wanted it to feel. Ghosts of what he had once enjoyed, nothing more and nothing less. Tormenting and Other and anything but comforting.

But the freezing air of Nepal, biting at what remained of his flesh, shrinking his lung capacity within his chest, was more than just a ghost of a touch.

Genji could feel his cybernetic joints freezing up but kept forcing himself to keep going. Another step, another breath, more and more oxygen pulled from him in the fight to keep himself upright. He had come out here to scream and rage at the world, the same way the wind did. With Overwatch, he had finally felt like he’d had a purpose in life.

With Overwatch, he had been someone, even more than he had ever been as a Shimada. There had been a reason for his existence, for his every heartbeat.

But Overwatch was gone.

Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison were dead.

Drawing as deep of a breath as he could, Genji let out a rage-filled scream that turned into laughter halfway through. His parents would not be able to look at the creature he was now and see their youngest son. They would not be able to make the connection between the spoiled brat who had turned into a playboy and the amalgamation of metal and flesh. Shimada Genji had died a long time ago, long live Shimada Genji.

He threw his head back and laughed again, letting the wind pull at him.

His entire body was freezing up and it would be so _easy_ to let himself fall off the cliff and into the darkness and jagged rocks below him.

One of the systems that formed his body – That Angela had installed so carefully, once upon a time – beeped to inform him that the temperature was reaching dangerous numbers. He would freeze, and he could not decide if that was a relief or not. Genji ignored the warning and kept facing into the wind that seemed determined to beat him into the snow until he could be covered up by the flurries of it.

He closed his eyes.

The wind and the ice and the snow could have what remained of him, walking corpse that he was.

 

Of all the times he had been surprised to wake up, this was the most confusing one.

He was sat on a thin bedroll, a fire crackling only a few feet away. He could feel his remaining fingers again, but continued to hold still as if he were still asleep. It did not seem to work, however, because a voice addressed him. “Ah,” the synthetic tones made him tense up. “You are awake, then.”

Genji pushed himself into a sitting position and looked around.

An omnic sat on the other side of the fire, floating in what Genji remembered as the Lotus position. The strange orbs that circled his neck were reflecting the glow of the fire, making them look like polished bronze. The nine blue dots on his forehead were glowing a bright blue and Genji stared at them for a moment. “I was beginning to wonder if you would,” the omnic turned their head to face Genji, ever so slightly, and pressed their hands together at the palms. “You were found out in the snow. My brothers and sisters tried to treat you as if you were simply one of our kind, at first. When it was discovered that you were organic, they asked me to watch over you and see to your needs. My room is the one in our temple that has a fireplace big enough to warm you.”

“…Who are you?” Genji tilted his head.

“I would ask you the same,” the omnic seemed to be laughing at him a little. There was something charming and annoying about it all at once. “But I am Zenyatta. Are you feeling well?”

Genji only laughed and moved so that his back was pressed against the wall. “There is no good for me to feel, omnic. Zenyatta. My name is Genji and the world has seen fit to throw me away again.” He laughed when Zenyatta’s lights flashed brightly and he laughed when the omnic turned their entire body towards him. “I am a useless bit of flesh that, if you had only known better, you would have left out in the snow to freeze and shatter into shards.”

“There is a purpose for all, in this world,” Zenyatta’s hands came up to their chest and they inclined their head over them. “Our purpose is not always immediately clear to us, but we always find it.”

“Are you so certain of that?” Genji let the back of his helmet scrape against the stone wall.

Zenyatta made a noise that seemed to be a laugh. “If I am certain of any one thing, it is that there is a purpose for us all, Genji. Even if you do not see yours, in this moment, you will find it. The route of the parade is not clear to an onlooker. We do not see the path of the whole thing, we only see the part we are on.”

For some reason, part of Genji stirred at that. It was likely the same part of him that had always hoped to escape the Shimada clan intact, with his brother at his side. “What if the parade is over and my use in this world is as well?”

“If your purpose in this world was indeed over,” Zenyatta’s face did not change but there somehow seemed to be a smile on their face. “I do not believe you would be here right now.” They floated closer and then settled on the ground next to Genji. “You have arrived at the temple of the Shambali, Genji. I believe there is still a purpose for you in this world.”

A thin hand came up to hover over one of his cheeks, then moved down to pass over his chest. “You are so angry,” Zenyatta seemed almost mournful with those words. “I hope you will give me a chance to help with that.”

 

Genji took a deep breath and waited outside the curtain that formed his master’s doorway.

Zenyatta was finishing up with some of his other students, a small group of four that came to see him once a week. They were from the nearby village and Genji was possibly just as fond of them as their main teacher was. Nonetheless, he waited outside the door as patiently as he could manage. Zenyatta had requested that they have dinner together, as much as they could.

The food he carried was warm and the scent of it filtered through his faceplate sensors.

It was a mixture of spices and broth that one of the mothers’ in the village had concocted when she had found out about Genji’s trouble with smelling and tasting. She had called it her ‘Cold Remedy Stew’ and while it was strong enough to make eyes water and noses itch, it tasted like a normal stew to Genji. Ora, the mother who had figured out how to work around the faulty senses in Genji’s body, had presented him with the recipe and a stash of herbs and spices to recreate it with.

At the time, it had been enough to make him start sobbing. He had managed to keep himself together enough to thank her.

Zenyatta had coached him through the following near-breakdown.

He owed so much to the omnic. There had been fits and breakdowns and screaming and Zenyatta had born it all with the practiced ease that came from seeing it all time and again. Genji had yelled and thrown things and Zenyatta had only waited until his anger had settled and then gently teased a functioning person out of the wreckage once more.

So dinner together had quickly become a favorite pastime for Genji.

If Zenyatta requested it, Genji would do anything he could to make sure it happened in one way or another.

“Hello Genji!” came a small chorus of voices as the students trickled out of Zenyatta’s classroom.

“Ah, hello!” Genji laughed a little and bowed his head to them. “And how was today’s lesson?” he studied their faces and smiled behind his faceplate. “Were you all enlightened in any way?”

The youngest, Ora’s daughter Pei, grinned and thrust her fists into the air. “Master Zenyatta is the _best!_ ” she squealed in her small voice. After a moment, she went wide-eyed and leaned forward to hug him around the knee. “You’re cool too, Genji!”

“You are all quite brilliant,” Zenyatta’s voice was amused as it floated out of the room.

The children giggled and said goodbye again, then wandered off. Genji waited until they were out of hearing range before slipping into the room and setting the stew on the table near the front, collecting all but two of the cushions from the lesson and restacking them in the corner with the rest. “Am I included in that remark, master?” he teased the omnic as he returned and took the stew in his hands once more, kneeling on his cushion and waiting for Zenyatta to do the same.

“Of course you are, my wonderful student,” Zenyatta’s lights glowed a little brighter. “I would not say it if it were not directed at all of my students.”

“Of course not,” Genji agreed, watching as Zenyatta set up the small tea-making system he kept in his classroom for those who enjoyed such a thing. When offered, he took a cup and settled it next to his stew. Up until that point, the routine was exactly the same.

He was at the point where he usually turned and ate with his back to Zenyatta, continuing to speak with him in between bites.

Genji felt braver, today.

Zenyatta said nothing when he put his hands to the release button of his faceplate but Genji was keenly aware of his gaze. It was centered on Genji’s shoulder, politely averted. If he asked it of him, Zenyatta would not look. Perhaps that was why Genji followed through with his nearly-panicked thought and fully removed the parts of his helmet that kept his face sealed away.

There was a metal plate that kept his jaw, mangled and ruined, attacked to his head. The scars that traced over his face looked like something had burrowed its way into his skin and been chased by a chainsaw. His eyes had been so damaged that Angela had needed to replace them with cybernetic ones that glowed green at times. The plate on his jaw was hard-wired into his skull, circling around his ears. The ragged hair on the very top of his head did not continue down under the metal, the skin too scarred to allow the growth.

Taking a deep breath, Genji settled the faceplate by his knee, followed by the top of the helmet.

His master still gazed, serene and polite and content, at his shoulder, his arm, anywhere but at his face. Genji smiled, feeling the metal pulling at his mouth like it always did. “Master?” he prodded gently. “May we have our dinner now?”

“Oh, but of course,” Zenyatta pulled his attention to Genji’s face. “How did your day in the village go?”

“It went well,” Genji felt himself relaxing as things continued on in the normal manner.

(He always took his faceplate and helmet off during meal times with Zenyatta, after that. Something had made him a little bolder about it, a little better with himself.)

 

Genji was in a danger that he had somehow never managed to be in, before.

His days had become less anger-filled, less chaotic and hateful, and it was all thanks to Zenyatta. The omnic had rescued him in more than one way. Genji had been a shell and Zenyatta had taught him how to be a person again. How to be human again, if such a thing were indeed possible.

Having spent several years with the Shambali, Genji had settled into his new life with a remarkable ease.

Mornings were spent in meditation. Afternoons were classes and chores around the temple. Evenings were spent discussing various topics with Zenyatta. Somehow, in the seven years he had spent with him, Genji had not yet run out of things to talk about with his master. Similarly, Zenyatta seemed to always have something to say in response to whatever it was that Genji would begin to talk about.

The two of them were well-matched in wit and banter and Genji adored it.

The time he spent with Zenyatta was the best of his life.

Which, he supposed, was the problem.

Somehow, in some way that he had never forseen, the happiness he felt had crept even further into his still-broken heart and had brought light to it. Genji had tried to deny it, had thrown every argument at himself that he could think of, had debated it with himself until he was exhausted, but in the end there was only one truth.

He was in love with Zenyatta.

The fondness and devotion had crept in and made a home for itself and Genji was unable to stop. There was just something about the dry wit, the way Zenyatta was kind and good and wonderful, the way that he seemed to line up with the edges of Genji until he could see nothing but a future of them together. Even if it were to be non-romantic, Genji knew that Zenyatta was his future.

He had never believed in soulmates until he had met an omnic with a soul.

The words that Zenyatta had used to convince him, all those years ago, came back to him. He had been right – someone watching the parade from one spot would never see all the twists and turns the route would take.

Falling in love with his master, a Shambali monk, an omnic…

That was a turn he had never expected to take.

Genji had gone from a spoiled child to a rich playboy teenager to an Overwatch agent pretending to still be like his teenaged self to a cyborg in recovery from his own anger as well as the damages to his body and Zenyatta was still the biggest surprise.

When he woke in the morning, it felt like the sun shone simply because Zenyatta existed.

He told him as much, one day. The words fell from his mouth like water over a cliff. In the silence following them, Genji closed his eyes and waited.

“Oh, _Genji_ ,” Zenyatta whispered.

The hands he had grown familiar with, the thin metal ones that always seemed so graceful, landed on his cheeks as Zenyatta pressed their foreheads together. Blue and green lights mingled and the monk laughed, quiet and relieved. “I am so glad you feel the same,” Zenyatta seemed to shiver, angling his head so that he could pull Genji closer.

They sat like that for a happy small eternity, basking in the sunlight streaming through the window and in the presence of the other.

 

When Overwatch agents are recalled, Genji goes.

He is a much different person than he once was, but he still feels the need to help them and to help as much of the world as he can.

It is a pleasant surprise that Zenyatta comes with him.

 

He nearly breaks down again once he has dragged his brother into it.

Hanzo and him have a talk that lets Genji know what became of his brother. What the clan did to him for running away after he had ‘killed’ Genji.

It makes a spike of the older Genji, the one raised on violence and an assurance that he was in command, rise up in his mind and hiss words of anger to him once more. He sends his brother off to flirt with Jesse (He will deal with that being strange _later_.) and spends the evening with his head in Zenyatta’s lap while his monk reads aloud from a book. Thin robotic fingers card through the patch of hair on top of Genji’s head.

It has been twenty years since his brother attacked him.

Genji never hated him for it.

 

Gabriel Reyes is still alive and it feels like the world is ending again.

Jack Morrison is still alive.

Genji stumbled at the news and felt sick to his stomach. He was in the dining area when he found out, Jesse storming in to inform him. He had heard about the cowboy having a breakdown in regard to new recruits but he had not known why.

No one had realized he should be told until Jesse had told him.

He sat at the table for what felt like hours, staring blankly at the wall. Gabriel Reyes had become a being named Reaper, had been one of Overwatch’s worst enemies. Jack Morrison had become a vigilante called Soldier: 76 and his memory was gone. Had been gone for twenty years.

Genji shuddered and flinched away when the lights turned on.

With a quiet hum, Zenyatta sat next to him and waited, simply twining their hands together. Genji knew he would wait, would never push, and he was thankful for it.

A few minutes later, Hanzo and Jesse both appeared in the doorway.

His brother clambered onto the bench to sit across from him, splaying both of his hands on the tabletop and simply waiting. It was a tactic he had used when they were children, whenever Genji had fallen into a crying fit for whatever reason. Just like back then, Genji used his free hand to curl his fingers around his brother’s. Jesse settled in next to Hanzo and looked exhausted.

“I di’n’t mean ta ferget to tell you,” he muttered. “With everything happening, it jus’ sort of…”

“You do not do this out of malevolence, Jesse McCree,” Genji laughed a little, nodding. “I know you too well to think that of you.”

“Anythin’ I can do?”

Hanzo looked at his partner and smiled a little. “If he is anything like he was as a child, Genji would probably like to eat comforting foods and watch ridiculous television. Or movies – You tormented me with them, do not lie,” he cut Genji off before a protest could be made. The small smile that had twisted his lips had turned into a full grin.

Both of them were free of their demons, it seemed.

“Well,” Jesse thought about it for a moment, frowning. “Most of what I remember you even sort of likin’ as food was jus’ because you ‘could almost taste it’. Anything you found since that you’re awful fond of? Could take a stab at makin’ it.”

Genji nodded, feeling his bad mood slip away like water through fingers. He could not hold onto it anymore, not for this sort of thing. “There is something,” he looked at Zenyatta and worried at his lip inside the helmet. “Did we bring the recipe with us when we left the temple or is it among the things we left behind?”

“It is with us at all times,” Zenyatta smiled one of his abstract smiles, his head inclined slightly. “When we arrived, I asked Athena if she would not mind storing it in your personnel files, under the heading of ‘other information’. I can retrieve a data pad and be back with it in a few minutes.” He turned to Jesse. “Would that be acceptable to you?”

“Nah,” Jesse stood up and waved Zenyatta back into his seat. “I can get the pad myself. Stay here.” He grinned, a little evilly, and tapped two fingers against his temple in a somewhat mocking salute. “Reminds me of old times. Of the good ones, anyway.”

He wandered off and was back in less than five minutes, scrolling through a pad. “So tonight’s dinner is gonna be Genji’s stew and then food for everyone else,” he announced as he came and stood by the table. “Ain’t no way anyone else will be able to taste what I am about to make Genji and still have a tongue ta talk with.”

Genji laughed.

(Gabriel, as it turned out, could eat the stew that Genji ate.)

Dinner was spent with his family, his faceplate and helmet off to one side as he spoke with his brother like there had been barely a blip in their lives. The food was warm and good, the scent of spices filling the air, and Jesse’s ridiculous singing filling in the quiet spaces between conversation.

Genji was finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> Mwahahaha


End file.
